AP FILE PHOTODozens of supporters walk down Pipestone Street in Benton Harbor, April 6, 2012, during a hoodie march and rally for Trayvon Martin. Seventeen-year-old Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012.

Reasonable people understand that the Trayvon Martin case boils down to a series of complicated legal questions.

Hot-headed vigilantes like Spike Lee and the New Black Panthers aren't interested in the law. They simply want revenge for the death of a young black man, regardless of whether he was killed within the boundaries of the law or not.

To some degree, I understand how they feel. George Zimmerman was clearly a troubled person with far too much time on his hands, who took his duties as a "neighborhood watch officer" far too seriously.

Zimmerman had a right to consider Martin a "suspicious person" if he wanted, and he had a right to contact police about Martin's presence in the neighborhood, if he thought that was necessary. But that's where his involvement should have ended. If the police thought there was a reason to check Martin out, they would have done so on their own.

Zimmerman was extremely stupid to follow Martin down the road. If he had minded his own business, a tragic death and a national controversy would have been avoided. There's no doubt about that.

It's obvious that Martin felt threatened by Zimmerman's pursuit. And he may have panicked when Zimmerman got out of his vehicle and started following him on foot. Martin could have run. He could have used his cell phone to call the police.

Instead it appears that he chose to turn around and confront his pursuer. He probably figured he had a right to attack before being attacked, which can be considered a form of self-defense. Perhaps Zimmerman meant no physical harm. Martin had no way of knowing that.

That brings us to the crux of this very troubling case. Under Florida law, did Martin have a right to assume that his pursuer was aggressive and attack him in self-defense? And when that occurred, did Zimmerman have the right to shoot Martin in self-defense?

I really don't know how Florida statute deals with these very tricky questions, but my guess is that prosecutors have been experiencing long, sleepless nights trying to untangle this tragic mess.

I don't envy these folks. Whatever they decide is going to draw howls of protests from one side or another. If they decide that Zimmerman was protecting himself against imminent injury and don't bring charges, they can probably expect riots around the nation.

That's the part I find particularly sickening. There are a bunch of jerks out there who are trying to make this a racial issue.

The filmmaker Spike Lee went so far as to tweet what he thought was Zimmerman's address. But an elderly couple happened to live at that address, and were forced to flee from threatening visitors who incorrectly assumed they had some connection to Zimmerman.

Lee eventually apologized to the couple, after he realized his mistake. But what if that had really been Zimmerman's address? What was Lee's intent? Did he really expect people to simply stand outside the house with protest signs, or did he have something more violent in mind?

The New Black Panthers were more straightforward. They encouraged people to take the law into their own hands by hurting or killing Zimmerman, and they offered a bounty as incentive.

Based on these outrageous reactions, someone from another country might assume that white-on-black violence remains a common problem in America, and the Martin incident was the final straw for a justifiably enraged black community.

But according to Amy research, non-blacks physically attacking blacks has become rather rare in our nation. Far more common is black-on-black violence, which according to one source accounts for 97 percent of the murders of black men every year.

That's a problem that should be addressed, but for some reason we don't see Lee, the New Black Panthers, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton screaming about those incidents. And they should be.

They should be loudly condemning the culture of drugs and violence that's been so widely embraced by young black men. They should be screaming at the billionaires in Hollywood who glorify the culture of drugs and violence through television, movies and music.

The people who run Hollywood know what they're selling, and they know how many lives their message is destroying. But they won't change because there's money to be made, and nobody is holding them accountable for their crimes.

Why don't you tweet the addresses of a few Hollywood producers and rap artists, Mr. Lee? That would prove you're really interested in protecting young black men from their true enemies, instead of just race baiting over a tragic but isolated incident.